Thoughts on games (with probably too much computational complexity) updating every Tuesday and Friday some days during the school year

Monday, March 21, 2016

Two different Anti-Clobbers

In a post many years ago about Martian Chess, I mentioned trying to play a Clobber variant where each clobbering move destroys your own piece instead of the opponent's. In the comments, Michael Albert replied that he had already studied this game a bit and was referring to it as Anti-Clobber.

I liked that name and ran with it, and mentioned it in some talks, etc. Then, a few months ago, I found out that there's already a different game with this name and it's implemented in CGSuite. Clearly that's enough reason to change the name of the game I've been calling Anti-Clobber.

The actual Anti-Clobber is really like playing Clobber in reverse: each turn, instead of clobbering an adjacent opposing piece, you move a piece into an adjacent unoccupied spot and place a new opponent piece in the space you just left. It's definitely non-trivial, interesting, and fun. There are some sneaky moves you can make.

Good news: This is a great game!

Bad news: It is definitely more Anti-Clobber than the game I was considering before. It's also better for some other names I was thinking of:

Reverse Clobber

Unclobber

Backwards Clobber

So, I need to change the name to something different. Here's what I've brainstormed so far:

Self-Clobber

Suicide-Clobber (too morbid?)

Got any other good ideas? Got any feelings towards these? Let me know via email or in the comments.

Combinatorial Game Man

artist: Molly Dannaher

What is This?

This blog is devoted to Combinatorial Game Theory! Combinatorial games are two-player games with no randomness, perfect information (no one has any hidden information) and no draws allowed, though sometimes topics stray into other types of games as well.

Please let me know if you are interested in either writing a guest post or suggesting a topic. I would like this to be more reflective of CGT as a whole and not restrict it to my take on things. Additionally, please help me fill out the table of game properties, either by suggesting games or letting me know about results!